The former police chief of Donetsk Oblast, who governing coalition lawmakers accuse of being in league with Kremlin-backed separatists, has left Kyiv citing concerns for his personal safety.
Ex-police major Roman Romanov on Aug. 3 told Novosti
Donbas, a Donetsk Oblast news outlet that he doesn’t want to become a new
“Buzyna,” referring to a Russophile journalist who was gunned down near his
Kyiv residence on April 16.
Romanov claimed in the interview that he had started
receiving threats after pro-presidential lawmaker Yehor Firsov, a native of
Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast, noticed him working out a Kyiv gym and wrote about
the encounter on his Facebook page on July 31.
Firsov said he was surprised to have seen him,
assuming that Romanov had stayed in Donetsk or fled to Russia. The legislator
also posted a video on YouTube recorded on March 3, 2014 inside the Donetsk
Oblast Administration building when separatists first took it over less than
two weeks after former President Viktor Yanukovych abandoned office and fled
Ukraine.
Romanov is seen assuring the Kremlin-backed
separatists in the session hall that the “Berkut (riot) police won’t come” and
that “they’re currently at their base.” He also tells them that the “police is
with the people” and before leaving the podium, he asks the crowd not to
“maraud through the offices.”
Former Donetsk Oblast councilman Vitaliy Kropachev,
who was there that day as separatists broke up a plenary session, told Fakty
newspaper on July 14 that Romanov had asked the regional lawmakers and
officials that were there to hear out Pavlo Gubarev, who had declared himself
the new governor of the region, to the protests of those present.
Once they broke in, the separatists escorted the
regional lawmakers and officials out of the building through a basement that
leads to a café attached to the building.
Two days later on March 5, 2014 separatists re-took
the government building after police evacuated it on grounds that a bomb threat
had been made by phone. The same day Romanov resigned, according to Novosti
Donbas, “because I saw that there was (public) distrust.”
He rejected accusations that he had “surrendered
Donetsk” and of “treason.”
“I was born in Donetsk and I never betrayed the
people of Donetsk,” Romanov said.
Romanov said he told Firsov in the gym that “history
will set the record straight,” regarding his actions, the same phrase that
Firsov cited in his social media post.
Following Firsov’s post on social media, lawmaker
Anton Gerashchenko of the People’s Front party and a law enforcement
parliamentary committee member described Romanov of harboring “suspicious
loyalties” towards the “actions of separatists backed and inspired by Russian
special forces.”
Gerashchenko said that after resigning, Romanov lived
for a period in Russia-annexed Crimea, which the former police major confirmed
to Novosti Donbas, stating “as all people do in the summer.”
The parliamentarian said he asked the State Security
Service to conduct an assessment of Romanov’s work performance as Donetsk
Oblast police chief.
“I also publicly appeal to the leadership of the
State Security Service and General Prosecutor’s Office to examine the actions
of all chiefs of police, security service, prosecutors, and heads of regional
and local government bodies from the moment when deliberate anti-Ukrainian
speeches were given in the southern and eastern oblasts of Ukraine, and provide
a systemic account who remained loyal to their oaths, and who betrayed the
(national) interests of Ukraine,” Gerashchenko said.
Romanov, 46, became Donetsk Oblast police chief on
March 26, 2013.
Moscow-backed separatists took over the Donetsk
regional government building a third time on April 6, 2014, and occupy it to
this day.
Former Donetsk Oblast police chief Pavlo Romanov addresses Moscow-backed separatists in the regional government building on March 3, 2014 after they broke in and interrupted a plenary session attended by regional lawmakers and local government officials (in the Russian language).
